Recently, oil price surpassed US$70 per barrel due to the heightened threat to energy facilities in the Middle East. As the tension between the United States and Iran increases with the US threatening to attack Iran’s oil installations, there has been a significant rise in oil prices from US$64 to US$72 between December 2019 and January 20203. Given that Nigeria’s oil price benchmark for the 2020 budget is US$57 per barrel, there are likely to be significant gains into the Excess Crude Account in the first quarter. Although the government will benefit from the rise in oil prices in the form of increased oil revenue and foreign exchange reserves, the cost of petrol subsidy will also increase. In order to take advantage of the price increase, the government should ramp up local production and begin the process of fuel subsidy removal.
January 29, 2020
Nigeria Economic Update (Issue 02)
Related
Nigeria Economic Update (Issue 3)
The
Nigeria stock market indices; All Share Index (ASI) and Market Capitalization
declined by 2.4 percent to close at 26537.36 points and N9.12 trillion
respectively at the end of the trade session this week8 The decline
in the indices, which is attributed to the low subscription for stocks in the
market, led to the partnership between Security and Exchange Commission (SEC)
and Debt Management Office (DMO) to salvage the financial system.